The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for transporting packages from winding stations of a textile machine to a location for further handling or processing.
The winding stations of certain textile machines can be operated to build cross-wound packages and these cross-wound packages are transported to locations for handling or processing, such as yarn twisting or doubling machines which combine yarn from a pair of cross-wound packages. If a pair of corss-wound packages are to be combined at a doubling machine, it is advantageous if the cross-wound package supplying the cover yarn has a greater amount of yarn than the other cross-wound package of the pair, which supplies the core yarn. To this end, one economical configuration of the winding stations for producing the cross-wound packages is a configuration in which the individual winding stations alternately produce cross-wound packages of different lengths or in which certain winding stations produce packages of one length while other winding stations produce packages of a different length.
To expedite the transport and identification of the cross-wound packages of different characteristics for subsequent processing, it is advantageous to maintain the cross-wound packages of each characteristic separate.